Posted on 07/31/2002 9:27:40 AM PDT by Polycarp
"You can say that you love and respect your Evangelical brothers and sisters, but only in the Catholic Church are these graces to be found in their full range and power — which is why all the horror stories in the world will not discourage you."
"For example, many (I do not know how to put this delicately) left the Church when they wanted to remarry after a divorce, and the conjunction of their remarriage and their enlightenment is too convenient for me to accept the latter at face value."
How true this is. I've seen friends and family members fall away precisely for this reason. In some cases, the people who have fallen away have astonished and saddened me.
sitetest
But they can come back. Point them toward a deacon or pastor who will help them with an annulment, and then invite them back to the Sacraments.
We just had a series entitled, "Catholics Can Come Home Again" book is by Carrie Kemp. We had 15 former Catholics come the first night. Out of that, over half of the people said they were there because of their former marriage, divorce, lack of an annulment, civil marriage, not having their marriage blessed. ALL of them missed the Sacraments!
From those original 15, we had 9 finish and come back to the Church........................Alleluia! So it can happen!
There are several other programs:
Landings
Welcome Home, Catholics, and others.
Evangelicals and fundamentalists often brag that 50% or more of their congregations are former Catholics.
Of course, the dirty little secret is that a majority of those "former Catholics" fall into this or similar categories.
"Point them toward a deacon or pastor who will help them with an annulment, and then invite them back to the Sacraments."
Been there, done that. In at least three cases, we (myself, my wife, my family) urged our friends and relatives to pursue this. In all three cases, at the slightest obstacle, each individual decided not to go further. It was eye-opening to hear the "reasons" why the Church was wrong in the process.
Very sad.
sitetest
This is precisely why I spend my time here, not there. We must shepherd our time, and spend our talents where they will receive the greatest fruits. There have been many conversions as a result of Catholic apologetics efforts here on FR.
If the same is true at the site you mention, excellent!
If not, revert to the "pearls before swine" position, dust off your sandals and move on.
Debate for the sake of debate is worthless.
Our efforts must be consumed with the salvation of souls, not matching wits.
I learned this the hard way, and its the reason I now avoid Neverending story type threads.
Reasons or excused? Not funny in either case, however. Lost souls. I agree, that we can only plant the seed; the Lord will do the reaping when people are ready.
When we held out class we thought that if only one person came back to the Catholic Church, we would have reached our goal.
Keep planting those seeds!
Great point there.
However, I always use this story of The Wedding at Cana to illustrate the primacy of the Sacrament of Matrimony since it was Christ's first miracle, asking the Protestants why Jesus performed his first miracle at a wedding?
Also, it was at his Mother's prompting. So sometimes I use this passage to ask the Protestant, "If Jesus, indeed, did what His Holy Mother asked of Him, then why should we not believe that we could ask Mary to intercede for us also?"
They do not have answers to either question!
Where did you get your statistics?
Of course, the dirty little secret is that a majority of those "former Catholics" fall into this or similar categories.
I left the catholic church because after 12 yrs in catholic schools, and 21 years in the church I had no clue what the catholic church actually believed, so it didn't mean alot to me. Oh yeah, go ahead and put the blame on me, that's ok, it couldn't possibly be that the catholic school I attended was bad at teaching. Blame it on a kid.
I have actually learned more about what catholics actually believe (that is actual catholics, not the millions that claim to be who are teaching in the schools:) from participating on these threads for the last year. I still cannot agree with their teachings, but I have more respect for what they believe now then before.
Becky
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